On Being with Krista Tippett

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a friend, teacher, and colleague to the work of On Being. But before that was true, Krista took a revelatory trip to meet him at his home in Northern Ireland, a place that has known sectarianism and violent fracture and has evolved, not to perfection, yet to new life and once unimaginable repair and relationship. Our whole world screams of fracture, more now than when Krista sat with Pádraig in 2016. This conversation is a gentle, welcoming landing for pondering and befriending hard realities we are given. As the global educator Karen Murphy, another friend of On Being and of Pádraig, once said to Krista: “Let’s have the humility and the generosity to step back and learn from these places that have had the courage to look at themselves and look at where they’ve been and try to forge a new path with something that resembles ‘together’ … Right now we should be taking these stories and these examples and these places and filling our pockets and our lungs and our hearts and our minds with them and learning deeply.” And that’s what this hour with Pádraig invites.Pádraig Ó Tuama is a theologian, writer, and conflict transformation practitioner. He is a member and former leader of the Corrymeela Community of Northern Ireland. His books include an incandescent memoir, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World; a prayer book, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community; a book of poetry, Sorry For Your Troubles; and a book of theology and politics co-authored with Glenn Jordan, Borders & Belonging. He hosts the On Being Studios podcast Poetry Unbound. His forthcoming book, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, will be published in October 2022 and is available for pre-order wherever you get your books. Pádraig grew up in the Republic of Ireland, near Cork.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode Pádraig Ó Tuama — “This fantastic argument of being alive.” Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in March 2017.___________Do you love what you're hearing? Our invitation to patronage is happening now. Participate in all that On Being is and is becoming. Give and more: onbeing.org/LoveUs.Sign up for The Pause to receive our seasonal Saturday morning newsletter and advance invitations and news on all things On Being.And: if you can, please take a minute to rate On Being in this podcast app — you'll be bending the arc of algorithms towards this adventure of conversation and living. 

The visionary, next-generation organizer Ai-jen Poo says this of Tarana Burke: “There are just so many layers of hope that she brings to the world and to people like me, to survivors, to all kinds of communities.” Ai-jen and Tarana are the conversation partners for this episode of The Future of Hope. And what a conversation it is. We listen in on a brilliant friendship that has powered and sustained two extraordinary women who are leading defining movements of this generation that call us to our highest humanity. Ai-jen has been long ahead of a cultural curve we are all on now — of seeing the urgent calling to update and transform not just how we value the caregiving workforce of millions, but how we value care itself as a society. Tarana founded the ‘me too.’ Movement. What you are about to hear is intimate, revelatory, and rooted in trust and care. It’s also an invitation to all of us, to imagine and build a more graceful way to remake the world.Ai-jen Poo co-founded and leads The National Domestic Workers Alliance, is the director of Caring Across Generations, and co-founder of Supermajority. Among her countless awards, she was a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. She’s the author of The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. Her previous conversation with Krista is “This Is Our (Caring) Revolution” — find it at onbeing.org and in your podcast feed. Tarana Burke has been organizing within issues facing Black women and girls for over three decades. Her many accolades include the 2019 Sydney Peace Prize and the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award from Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. She’s the author of Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. 

You probably know the outline of the Exodus story and its main characters: Moses, the Pharaoh, the burning bush, the plagues, the parting of the sea. And, in another realm of the power of story, the words “let my people go” and the arc of liberation from slavery have inspired people in crisis and catharsis across time and cultures. Call it “myth” if you will — as the Greek Statesman Solon said, myth is not something that never happened. It’s something that happens over and over and over again. Avivah Zornberg walks us through the Exodus story that is relived in the Jewish Passover and resonates through Easter. She is a modern-day master of midrash — the ancient Jewish art of inquiry for discovering the deepest of meaning in and between the biblical lines. What can look simple on the surface, as she reveals, is a cargo of hidden stories that tell the messy, strange, redemptive truth of us as we are and life as it is. Krista and Avivah Zornberg had this lovely, intimate conversation in the early days of this show, in 2005.Avivah Zornberg is a scholar of the Torah and a modern-day master of midrash. She lives in Israel but grew up in Scotland, the daughter and granddaughter of East European rabbis. And before she taught the Bible, she taught English literature. She is the author of many books, including The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, and most recently, The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in April, 2005.

You probably know the outline of the Exodus story and its main characters: Moses, the Pharaoh, the burning bush, the plagues, the parting of the sea. And, in another realm of the power of story, the words “let my people go” and the arc of liberation from slavery have inspired people in crisis and catharsis across time and cultures. Call it “myth” if you will — as the Greek Statesman Solon said, myth is not something that never happened. It’s something that happens over and over and over again. Avivah Zornberg walks us through the Exodus story that is relived in the Jewish Passover and resonates through Easter. She is a modern-day master of midrash — the ancient Jewish art of inquiry for discovering the deepest of meaning in and between the biblical lines. What can look simple on the surface, as she reveals, is a cargo of hidden stories that tell the messy, strange, redemptive truth of us as we are and life as it is. Krista and Avivah Zornberg had this lovely, intimate conversation in the early days of this show, in 2005.Avivah Zornberg is a scholar of the Torah and a modern-day master of midrash. She lives in Israel but grew up in Scotland, the daughter and granddaughter of East European rabbis. And before she taught the Bible, she taught English literature. She is the author of many books, including The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, and most recently, The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Avivah Zornberg — Human Becoming, Between Biblical Lines." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in April, 2005.

“Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.” These are words of the late legendary biblical interpreter and teacher Eugene Peterson. At the back of the church he pastored for nearly three decades, you’d be likely to find well-worn copies of books by Wallace Stegner or Denise Levertov. Frustrated with the unimaginative way he found his congregants treating their Bibles, he translated the whole thing himself and that translation has sold millions of copies around the world. Eugene Peterson’s literary biblical imagination formed generations of pastors, teachers, and readers. His down-to-earth faith hinged on a love of metaphor and a commitment to the Bible’s poetry as what keeps it alive to the world.Eugene Peterson wrote over 30 books including Answering God, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, and The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. In 2021, a Lenten sermon series of his was published posthumously with the title: This Hallelujah Banquet: How the End of What We Were Reveals Who We Can Be. He served as the pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church for 29 years. He spent the last years of his life with his wife, Jan, at the home his father built in Lakeside, Montana, just outside Glacier National Park. That’s where he was when he spoke with Krista in 2016, two years before he died at the age of 85.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in December 2016.

“Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.” These are words of the late legendary biblical interpreter and teacher Eugene Peterson. At the back of the church he pastored for nearly three decades, you’d be likely to find well-worn copies of books by Wallace Stegner or Denise Levertov. Frustrated with the unimaginative way he found his congregants treating their Bibles, he translated the whole thing himself and that translation has sold millions of copies around the world. Eugene Peterson’s literary biblical imagination formed generations of pastors, teachers, and readers. His down-to-earth faith hinged on a love of metaphor and a commitment to the Bible’s poetry as what keeps it alive to the world.Eugene Peterson wrote over 30 books including Answering God, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, and The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. In 2021, a Lenten sermon series of his was published posthumously with the title: This Hallelujah Banquet: How the End of What We Were Reveals Who We Can Be. He served as the pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church for 29 years. He spent the last years of his life with his wife, Jan, at the home his father built in Lakeside, Montana, just outside Glacier National Park. That’s where he was when he spoke with Krista in 2016, two years before he died at the age of 85.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Eugene Peterson – Answering God.” Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in December 2016.

The late poet Mary Oliver is among the most beloved writers of modern times. Amidst the harshness of life, she found redemption in the natural world and in beautiful, precise language. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award among her many honors — and published numerous collections of poetry and also some wonderful prose. Krista met with her in 2015 for this rare, intimate conversation. We offer it up anew, as nourishment.Mary Oliver published over 25 books of poetry and prose, including Dream Work, A Thousand Mornings, and A Poetry Handbook. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for her book American Primitive. Her final work, Devotions, is a collection of poetry from her more than 50-year career, curated by the poet herself. She died in 2019.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in February, 2015. 

The late poet Mary Oliver is among the most beloved writers of modern times. Amidst the harshness of life, she found redemption in the natural world and in beautiful, precise language. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award among her many honors — and published numerous collections of poetry and also some wonderful prose. Krista met with her in 2015 for this rare, intimate conversation. We offer it up anew, as nourishment.Mary Oliver published over 25 books of poetry and prose, including Dream Work, A Thousand Mornings, and A Poetry Handbook. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for her book American Primitive. Her final work, Devotions, is a collection of poetry from her more than 50-year career, curated by the poet herself. She died in 2019.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Mary Oliver — ‘I got saved by the beauty of the world.’" Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in February, 2015. 

What do poetry, songs, and prayer have in common? While preparing for the next season of Poetry Unbound, host Pádraig Ó Tuama sat down with Krista Tippett to wonder at this mystery: that poems land in our lives as though they knew us already, as if they were waiting for us. From Ada Limón to Rosanne Cash to Eugene Peterson — how single lines become a portable ritual, and help us live. Poetry Unbound hears from so many people who’ve encountered a poem and made it part of their life; and whose life adds something to the poem in turn. Pádraig invites you, our dear listeners, to share your stories and experience of Poetry Unbound through our survey. And discover what’s waiting to meet you ahead of the release of the very first Poetry Unbound book: sign up here for the latest.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The ornithologist J. Drew Lanham is lyrical in the languages of science, humans, and birds. His celebrated books include The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and a collection of poetry and meditations called Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts. J. Drew Lanham’s way of seeing and hearing and noticing the present and the history that birds traverse — through our backyards and beyond — is a revelatory way to be present to the world and to life in our time.J. Drew Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Master Teacher, and Certified Wildlife Biologist at Clemson University. He is the Poet Laureate of Edgefield County, South Carolina, where he grew up. He is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and a collection of poetry and meditations, Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in January, 2021.